DateFriday 5 May 2006

It is with pleasure that we invite you to the launch of the most anticipated website on the internet … [name removed to spare pain] The presentation and unveiling of the new website will be followed by drinks and canapés. Your invitation is attached – it would help us if you would confirm your acceptance by email or phone.

It’s so 1995, isn’t it? Come to a room and we’ll unveil a .. website? Uh? Surely one unveils objects. I recall a line from an Arthur C Clarke short story I read long, long ago but which stuck in my mind:

“At the ceremony, the chairman pressed a button (which wasn’t connected to anything). The chief engineer pressed another button, which was..” (The story was “Travel by Wire“.)

And so when I go to these events and see the chief executive brightly press a button and declare sites “open” I think of the web folk labouring like Molochs and actually making it happen. Ah, scepticism (or is mine cynicism?) – how young it gets planted.